


Jolene

by thicnic



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27719198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thicnic/pseuds/thicnic
Summary: Rhett didn't know him and Christie had their own song. He isn't happy about what it is.
Relationships: Rhett McLaughlin/Link Neal
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	Jolene

**Author's Note:**

> Jolene popped up on the radio while I was driving to work the other day, and it reminded me of a couple of our boys in a very wholesome way.

“Jesus Rhett, calm down, she didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Really man? Calm down? Did you just tell me to….Link your wife just said Jolene is 'our song'. Her song and mine.” 

Rhett scraped a hand through his hair and stared at Link in frustration. “First off, I would’ve thought you might be a little bothered that your wife and I apparently have an “our song”, but excuse me if I’m disturbed that this is the one she chose. Why the hell aren’t you upset right now?”

Link sighed. “Because it was a joke. And it wasn’t the first time she’s made that joke so I wasn’t surprised by it.”

Up until that moment Rhett didn’t think he could feel more like his brain was exploding, but apparently he had been wrong.

“So this is just a thing? A thing that doesn’t upset either of you? Where you sit around and compare me to freakin Jolene? And everyone just acts like that’s normal. I don’t…man you’re making me feel crazy. I don’t think it’s crazy that I’m upset about this, but you acting like it’s nothing is making me feel crazy.”

Link stopped trying to look anywhere but at Rhett and reached out to grab his wrist. “Hey, it’s not crazy man. I didn’t say it was crazy for you to be upset. Okay?” Link tilted his head to make Rhett’s eyes meet his and squeezed his wrist lightly. “I asked you to calm down because you’re being loud right now, and my kids are inside and I really don’t want them up listening to us.” Link raked a hand through his hair. “I did get upset the first time she said it, okay? But she doesn’t mean it how you think she does. Not really.”

Rhett stared at Link with clear frustration. “Not really, huh. Care to explain to me how exactly she’s supposed to mean this that I’m not thinkin about?”

Link sighed.

“It’s just a joke man. About how...much...we end up being in each other’s heads. How much we sometimes are. You and me make jokes about that all the time man. You know you said husbands before I did.” 

Link laughed as he said ‘husbands’, like he was hoping that he could redirect this whole conversation away from the overwhelming tide of emotions sitting at its edges. 

Rhett continued to stare at Link with complete disbelief. He could hear that his voice had gone up an octave during the course of the conversation and he couldn’t seem to bring it back down now.

“Link...there is a difference….there’s a difference between that and Jolene. I don’t need to explain the difference to you. That was a way of describing our friendship that might make sense to other people. To try to translate us. That is completely different from me being ‘the other woman’. Being your husband, even as a joke, is completely different than being the other freaking woman. Why do I keep having to say that it’s different?”

Link let out a frustrated sigh and let go of Rhett’s wrist to turn away toward the pool. He stared at the moonlight reflecting on the dark water. Behind him, he could hear Rhett shifting toward him and stopping just behind him.

Rhett stared at Link’s back for a moment, trying to calm himself down. He had felt something like panic when Christie had made the joke, offhand and unthinking while they drank wine after dinner. “Jolene” had come on a playlist and she had laughed, turned to Rhett with an easy smile and said “Hey, it’s our song!”. He had stared at her uncomprehendingly and she had laughed again. “You even kind of have the flaming locks now!”

She had gotten up as she said it and wandered back toward the kitchen to refill her glass without a look back. He had stared around himself in complete confusion.

“What does that mean?”

Jessie had smirked at him and patted his hand as she got up to follow Christie into the kitchen. “It’s a joke, honey.” 

Rhett had gaped like a fish staring after her before turning to Link, voice coming out strangled and off kilter, “What….what does that mean, man?”

In retrospect he agreed with Link, he had probably been too loud, but in the moment he hadn’t appreciated LInk shushing him and pulling him out of the living room and onto the back patio.

He wasn’t sure why he was this upset, but something about all this felt dangerous in a way it was hard for him to pin down. 

Willing himself back into the present, Rhett took a deep breath.

“Link if you want me to not be freaked out, you need to explain this to me. Is Christie mad at me? Does she want you at the house more? We can change whatever we need to change to fix this.”

Link huffed out a laugh.

“She ain’t mad at you man. She might have been mad at me the first time she said it, but it really is just a joke now. The only reason she even made the joke today is because the song happened to come on.”

“Why was she mad the first time? “

Link sighed.

“Man it doesn’t matter. She’s over it. It’s just a joke now.”

“Link.”

Rhett’s hand landed on his shoulder and gently turned Link around to face him. His eyes were sad and serious.

“Why was she mad, man? Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter. You guys are some of the most important people in my life. You are…” Rhett’s voice went strained and cut out. He took a deep breath, “I don’t want your wife unhappy with how much time we spend together. If she’s mad at me I need to know what I need to fix. I need you to talk to me and not just brush me off.”

Link finally made eye contact and let out a sharp huff of breath.

“Man….I wish you would just drop this. It’s not how much time we spend together, okay? It’s not anything you done. It’s embarrassing, okay? I don’t… I don’t want to talk about this.”

Link tried to pull away, but Rhett kept his hand on him, grabbing his arm to keep him where he was. The need to make Link feel better combined with Rhett’s constant need to know what was driving Link, to know always just what made him tick. It made Rhett forget his sharp edged panic for a minute. Knowing Link better than he knew himself was one of the constants in his life, and when it was combined with an inability to stand seeing Link unhappy about anything that Rhett could fix, he wasn’t able to let it go.

“There’s nothing embarrassing between us, man. It’s all fine. That’s the rule isn’t it? Nothing you could say to me should embarrass you.”

Link laughed again, but this time it was a sharp, brittle thing.

“Nothing, huh? You’re playing with fire Rhett. I don’t want to have this conversation.”

“Buddyroll you may not want to have it, but I deserve an explanation. This involves me too apparently, and everyone except me seems to get some joke that I’m just missing.”

“Damnit Rhett.” He breathed out, hard. “Fine. What the hell are the rest of the lyrics in that damn song man? ‘He talks about you in his sleep’. That’s the line you’re looking for, okay? I had some dream with you in it, said your name out loud, and she thought it was something it wasn’t. We had a fight about it, and then we got over it.”

Link rubbed a hand across his face, looking away from Rhett, “The next time the song came on she made a little joke. ‘Oh that sounds like you and Rhett, doesn’t it? You talkin about him in your sleep. Maybe I should be askin him not to take my man’. It was a joke. It is a joke. But it’s nothing to do with you or anything you did, okay?”

Link tried to pull away again now, but Rhett kept his hold on him, grabbing both shoulders to face him. Link’s eyes darted down and away, refusing to make eye contact with Rhett.

“Stop trying to run away from me man. Anything that’s to do with you is to do with me, so don’t try to run that ‘nothing to do with you’ line past me.” Rhett’s voice softened and he ducked his head, trying to get Link to catch his eye, “Will you actually explain this to me? The long way? I know you don’t want to talk about it but I need to understand.”

Link finally raised his eyes from the ground to meet Rhett’s gaze, looking tired and miserable.

Rhett hated seeing that expression on his face and smirked gently at him trying to shift the mood away from the overwrought place they seemed to have ended up, “Why you saying my name when you’re sleeping, huh? You havin dirty dreams about me Neal? Or was it another nightmare about all those times I beat you at everything? I know that keeps you up at night, wanting to beat me at something.”

Link laughed, unable to stop himself from being amused by Rhett. “Oh it’s something alright.” He stared at Rhett softly, “You really want to push this Rhett?”

Rhett nodded. “C’mon man, it can’t be that bad.”

Link let out another laugh, but this one sounded like it was edging toward hysterical. “You think so, huh? Jesus. Okay. Fine. I...that particular dream… I guess it was kind of about you beating me. We were wrestling, like when we were in college, and you were holding me down. Not the ‘I’m dead’ thing exactly, more...holding my wrists and using your body weight to keep me in place. And no matter how I struggled I couldn’t move you.”

Link’s eyes were darting everywhere but to Rhett, his voice getting tighter as he spoke. “I kept trying to buck you off, and you were just holding me down, telling me to just accept it. And I wanted to stop struggling, but it felt good to struggle against you. I liked it Rhett. I...really liked it. And in the stupid dream I moaned your name, because I really liked it. Because I needed you to know that so that you could get off me. And you did. But then you looked at me like I was sick, and you got up and walked out of the dorm room. And I called after you and you just kept walking, and I just knew, the way you do in dreams, that you were never coming back, because you hated me. And that’s when Christie woke me up. Because I moaned your name and then I was crying and still saying your stupid name.”

He did pull away from Rhett now, and Rhett was too surprised to stop him. Link stepped out across the patio, keeping his back to Rhett. His voice was thick with emotion that he was trying to keep under control. 

“She thought something was going on between us. Said she’d thought that for a long time. And that started a whole other argument, because I may have my wires all screwed up about what and who turns me on, but I’m not a liar. I don’t say I’m faithful when I’m not. So we fought for a couple hours instead of sleeping, and then eventually we made up. And then later on she started making jokes about the Dolly Parton song. And then we had another fight about that before we made up again. And maybe she is still mad about it and that’s why she’s making the jokes. I don’t know. But I sure as hell wish she hadn’t made that joke in front of you, because now you’re gonna to be mad at me too, but I can’t change how I’m wired, man.”

He flailed back around to pace toward Rhett, arms outspread, his own voice raised now.

“I know you always want me to be more normal, but I can’t change the way I am. I’m not like...pining over you or anything weird. I just...my brain knows I love you, and my body gets confused about exactly which ways it’s okay for that love to work.”

He stopped now and stared up at Rhett, a kind of scared defiance written across his face, clearly waiting for Rhett to blow up, or stomp away, or look at him with whatever expression had been on his face in that dream.

The expression on Rhett’s face was hard to pin down, but it wasn’t disgust or anything else from his dream. It was sad maybe, but mixed with something else Link didn’t understand.

Rhett reached out and grabbed Link’s arm, dragging him close enough that he could wrap his arms around him in a tight hug. 

Link froze, uncertain now how to hold himself or what to do. He didn’t understand the situation well enough to trust it but he also didn’t want to pull away if Rhett wasn’t going to freak out at him. 

When Rhett finally bent his head to speak it was quiet and careful, a harsh almost desperate whisper against Link’s ear.

“I would never walk away from you. I don’t know how to say this to make you hear it, Neal, but you are stuck with me. I don’t like that there’s a me in your head who would ever choose to walk away from you. I’m sorry I didn’t know how to say that when we were younger, and I’m sorry if I made you feel like you couldn’t let me see parts of you.” 

Rhett’s big hand snaked up to hold Link’s head in place, to make sure he was hearing what Rhett had to say. “I need you to understand this, okay? All of it, all of it is fine. I’ve been trying to tell you that for a while now and I clearly haven’t done a good enough job because you still don’t seem to get it. I’m not trying to take you from anyone, because you are hers, but you are also mine. And I’m yours. In whatever ways there are to be. So stop looking at me like I’m gonna walk away from you or acting like you gotta hide from me. I hate it. If it’s part of you, it’s mine, and I want to see it, do you understand?”

Link felt moisture escaping his eyes and couldn’t work past the lump in his throat to do more than nod. 

Rhett pulled back to stare at his face, thumbs coming up to brush away the tears.

He studied Link’s face carefully before leaning forward to press a gentle kiss to his forehead. 

“Can you stop hiding these parts of yourself from me?”

Link’s eyes took on the sweet, almost boyish quality that he sometimes still exuded, and that never failed to cover Rhett in a wave of affection.

“Rhett…” he started and then stopped in favor of wrapping his arms around Rhett and burying his face in his chest. 

Rhett was pretty sure Link was crying again, and he could feel tears on his own face. 

He wrapped his arms around Link and held him to his chest, smoothing one hand up and down his back.

“We need to go back inside in a minute. And neither of us needs to be crying when we go in there. But we’re going to keep talking about this later, okay?”

Link’s head nodded against his chest, and his arms tightened around Rhett. His voice was muffled by Rhett’s shirt, vibrating against his chest.

“I don’t know how to talk about any of this. I don’t think I’ve been in therapy long enough.”

Rhett laughed. “We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

Link pulled back and grinned softly, face still showing a hint of raw emotion, quickly covered over by the smile Rhett always thought of as his armor. “Alright man. Let’s go see what our wives are up to.”

He kept a hand on Rhett’s back as they walked back toward the house.

Outside the door he stopped and gazed up at Rhett, quietly serious. 

“You’re mine, huh?”

Rhett felt another wave of emotion running over him.

“Always, man.”

They stared into each other’s eyes for a minute and Link’s hand reached up to pull Rhett down to him by the back of the neck.

“Is this okay?”

Rhett nodded, unable to find his voice.

Link closed the distance between them to press a light, gentle kiss against Rhett’s lips, pulling back to stare into his eyes again.

“Still okay?”

Instead of answering Rhett leaned forward to capture Link’s mouth for a firmer, more insistent kiss. Link moaned into his mouth and Rhett couldn’t stop himself from pressing Link backward into the wall next to the door to kiss him as thoroughly as possible. 

The feeling of it made Rhett want to drop to his knees. He’d loved Link his whole life, but somehow they had never done this, and he couldn’t actually understand why.

The sound of music from inside reminded him that they weren’t alone and he pulled back. He assumed that the look on his face mirrored the one on Link’s, which was some kind of combination of awe and punch drunk intoxication.

He mirrored Link’s previous question back to him, “Still okay?”

Link laughed. “Oh man. That. That was...wow.” He laughed again and ran his hand down from Rhett’s neck to his arm, holding him in place. “I think I gotta have a different conversation with my wife now.”

Rhett laughed and ducked his head.

“Yeah, I think Jessie and I need to talk too. Even if everyone except me apparently already knew I was trying to stake my claim on you.”

Link blushed and Rhett couldn’t stop himself from pressing one more brief kiss against his lips before pulling away and turning to the door. 

“You know something strange man? There’s a story that Dolly wrote “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” on the same day.”

Rhett looked back at Link, eyes glistening in the light.

“That so, huh?”

“That’s the story man. Seems right, don’t it?”

Rhett grinned. 

“Seems right.”


End file.
